Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sunlight flashed between the trees in blinding bursts. A lake shimmered silver-blue. Idyllic. The type of drive he loved if there wasn’t someone following them.
Enzo kept the wheel steady, eyes fixed on the asphalt.
The mirror confirmed what he already knew.
The black SUV was still behind them. Only now it was starting to gain on them.
They’d lost the other car that had been between them at the last village.
Now the road was empty except for the two of them.
He pressed the accelerator and the car leapt forward, engine growling. The SUV matched him, its glossy black shape looming larger with every turn.
“Someone’s following us, aren’t they?” Kathleen’s voice was tight.
“Yes. Hold on.” He didn’t want to frighten her, but he had no choice.
The SUV was coming fast. Thirty seconds later, his head jerked forward as their bumper was rammed.
The jolt rattled the frame. Kathleen gasped, clutching the dashboard, but Enzo didn’t flinch.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, forced the car into the bend, carrying serious speed.
Sunlight flared off the guardrail as it rushed by mere inches from the mirror.
Thankfully, his car sat on the curves like a hen on a nest.
The SUV dropped back as the driver started to skid in the turn. He swung wide in a spray of dust and gravel, then corrected. Enzo grimaced. It would’ve been so easy if the SUV had gone over the side. Life never worked out in the easy way.
The road pitched down, curling toward the lake. Enzo kept the accelerator down and braked late for the next turn, rear tires skimming the cliff’s edge before gripping again. They shot toward the middle of the road. The SUV copied the maneuver. Sloppy, but it stayed with him.
Then, just ahead of them, the glare of headlights. An oncoming truck roared toward them, sunlight glaring off its chrome grill.
Enzo cut back into his lane, engine roaring. The truck’s horn blasted the air as it thundered past, close enough that the slipstream rocked the car sideways. Kathleen cried out and grabbed the oh-shit bar over the window.
The SUV swerved behind them, trying to match Enzo’s maneuvers. Sparks flew as it scraped the guardrail, then swayed back into line.
Enzo swore and forced his speed higher. Afternoon heat shimmered off the road, turning the asphalt into a wavering mirage.
The SUV used the straight-away to close in, then lunged alongside.
Metal shrieked as the SUV’s front bumper clipped their rear quarter, shoving them toward the drop where sunlight glared off the lake far below.
The guardrail loomed. One more push and they’d go over.
“Enzo!” Kathleen’s voice cracked.
He snapped the wheel to the left, slamming their car into the SUV.
The jolt shook through his arms, tires screaming against the pavement.
The SUV skidded wide, rear tires spitting gravel into the sunlit void.
For an instant, it hovered on the precipice, and then tipped, and slid out of sight down the embankment, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.
“Oh my God! Enzo!” Kathleen yelled as she looked back over her shoulder.
Enzo kept his eyes forward, hands steady on the wheel. He checked the mirror. Nothing but dust and sunlight. Clear. For now. “We’re not stopping to help them. They wanted it to be us down that embankment.”
“We need to call someone,” Kathleen all but yelled. “We have to—”
“Kathleen, they were trying to hurt you. If we call the cops, it will just attract a lot of unwanted attention and lots of questions you don’t want to answer.”
“But…” she said as she glanced back through the rear window. “I…we can’t just leave them.”
“We can,” Enzo said as he made the turn onto the main road again, “and we will. They were trying to hurt you.”
“Me? Maybe they were trying to kill you? Maybe this has nothing to do with me,” she blurted as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“And maybe I’m the tooth fairy,” he growled.
Why couldn’t this woman get her brain around this?
After everything she’d been through, she should be able to see this situation for what it was…
An assassination attempt. He glanced over at her.
She was pale, and her knuckles were white where she gripped her arm.
He started again in a much calmer tone. “I have many enemies, but I haven’t done anything recently that would make anyone suddenly want to kill me. You, on the other hand, are in possession of a stolen statue. I think that pretty much guarantees that they are after you and Ernie.”
She bit her lip. “But I don’t understand. I thought we agreed to do the trade tonight. Why bother trying to get it now? And what would’ve happened if we’d crashed? Then they wouldn’t have gotten Ernie anyway, or at least it would’ve been damn difficult.”
Enzo didn’t immediately respond. He’d been wondering the same thing. “I think they were muscle. Told to stop us and get the statue. I don’t think they put a lot of thought into what would happen if we went into the water.” He didn’t say the rest of his thought out loud, but his stomach tightened.
If whoever wanted the statue decided that they didn’t want to wait until tonight, that they wanted the statue now, it might mean they also didn’t care who died in the process, or even worse, they didn’t want Kathleen to live, regardless, because she might talk about the statue and everything that happened.
Witnesses could be a dangerous thing. Even though she said she couldn’t really identify the guy, he didn’t know that.
Maybe keeping his identity hidden was more important to him than the statue.
If that were the case, they were walking into a hell of a trap tonight.
He glanced at Kathleen again. It was time to make some phone calls.
There was no way he was letting Kathleen be anywhere near the exchange tonight.
No fucking way. But if he was walking into something tonight, he was going to make damn sure he was coming out alive, and he didn’t care who he had to kill to make it happen.